The revolving door of familiar faces in the Marvel Cinematic Universe has always been an indicator that literally anybody could show up in the franchise at any time, but that has gotten so much truer since the launch of the Multiverse Saga. Now, we have actors and characters from other Marvel franchises making their presence felt in the MCU. It's really quite something.
We should expect to see a lot more of that in the coming weeks and months as production on Avengers: Doomsday is currently underway in the UK, meaning that the Multiverse Saga's heavily-anticipated two-part finale just got that much closer. And when it does arrive on the silver screen next year, there will undoubtedly be more surprises in store.
But Marvel truly surprised people this spring with announcements within announcements that were so big it was hard to take it all in. And in the midst of those lay a surprise we genuinely weren't expecting.
Tenoch Huerta Mejía to return in Avengers: Doomsday as Namor
Marvel Studios has officially confirmed that Tenoch Huerta Mejía will star in Avengers: Doomsday, reprising his role as Namor. The actor's name was among the 27 stars that were announced for the film in the iconic set chair reveals and it instantly surprised people simply due to the fact that we weren't expecting to see Namor in this particular movie.
We didn't get long to sit with the surprise, however, as some more major announcements came during the five-hour livestream, including the reveal that the majority of the original X-Men cast members would be reprising their roles in the upcoming juggernaut. But that shouldn't take away from the fact that Namor's appearance is a very big deal.
Huerta made his MCU debut as the character in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, with Namor being the primary villain of the 2022 movie. The king of Talokan, he initially reached out to the Wakandans in the hopes that they would provide them with vibranium and form an alliance to protect each other from the outside world. When he wanted to take Riri Williams into his custody, a war broke out between their nations until he and Shuri finally found common ground and agreed to help each other.
Could the arrival of Doctor Doom and the endangerment of the entire multiverse be the moment that finally sees them bring that union to the surface world? It certainly sounds like it would be a high-stakes event worthy of such an alliance. And with the armies of Wakanda and Talokan joining forces, Doom and any other threats to the Multiverse would have their hands full for sure.
Namor is an important character to the MCU for multiple reasons, but perhaps the biggest of them all is the fact that he is the franchise's first mutant. And no, we don't just mean that he's the first on-screen mutant - or the first time that the MCU has referenced mutants (it wasn't) - we mean that he is literally the first mutant in existence, as confirmed by Wakanda Forever.
With the X-Men set to debut / return in Avengers: Doomsday, he could prove pivotal in setting the stage for the Marvel Studios franchise to officially embrace mutants and set in motion the beginning of the Mutants Era that Kevin Feige had previously teased.